Callout Sheet Concept Art Callout Sheet Concept Art Architecture

Art Direction: Mood Boards, Design Packets and Callout Sheets
By Neil Blevins
Created On: Apr 26th 2021

The process of gathering reference is ane of the most important things you can do when making art. Simply now that you take all that reference, what should you do with information technology, and how exercise you use it to communicate your intentions to a team of people? That'due south where Reference Boards, Design Packets and Callout Sheets come into play.

Yous accept 2 choices with this lesson, watch me discuss the issue in the video beneath, or read the full text.

Boards, Packets and Callout Sheets come in a lot of different flavors, depending on what'south on them and who you're trying to communicate with. Here's a few examples...

Reference Lath
Mood Board
Inspiration Board
Style Sheet
Reference Package
Design Packet
Modeling Packet
Shading Packet
Callout Sheet
Modeling Callout Canvas
Set Dressing Callout Sheet
Shading Callout Sheet

Only regardless of the proper noun, the core idea is the same, to communicate ideas using pre-existing photos or stills from games or movies.

The term reference or mood board came from back when you took actual photographs or collages of magazine clippings, sometimes even concrete objects such as swatches of material, and fastened them to foam boards that you would put upwardly on a wall in meetings. Nowadays, these are nearly always digital, just the proper noun has stuck.

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In this lesson, I'll exist talking about these dissimilar types of reference tools, and some tips to make yours amend.

Reference Board

The first type is called a Reference Board, Mood Board or Inspiration Board. These tend to be the primeval in product on either a projection, or on a sub piece of a projection, and are primarily reference images since the concept stage hasn't happened yet. Like below is some of a reference board for a Dyson Sphere project, which includes reference from a boob tube testify, game, another artist and a random piece of imagery from the internet...

As a more detailed example, say I am working on a film, and my boss says he wants me to pattern a chair for our fictional scifi world. He may even give me a good concept brief that already has some images in there (check out my other lesson Writing A Concept Brief for more data on this topic). But the adjacent thing I practice is brand a personal Reference Board. This will be a collection of reference images from my ain library, and from the internet, images that relate to the chore I demand to exercise. Many of the images might be different styles of chairs. Some may have nothing to do with chairs, but have item that I'd like to include in my chair blueprint. Then I will show this lath to my boss to make sure nosotros're on the same page. And of course use the reference for the adjacent part of my job, which is designing the chair.

And reference boards of grade don't accept to exist specific to concept design. A Director Of Photography (DP) may have a mood board to evidence the types of lighting from other films that they desire to use every bit reference for the lighting in the movie they're about to do, and wants to show it to the managing director to see what they call up. Like a mood board of Moving picture Noir and harsh lighting...

When designing a character, it'southward quite mutual to take a mood lath of famous faces, elements of which you want to include in a grapheme yous'll be designing at a later on fourth dimension.

The mood board could be just colour schemes, you lot're trying to decide the colors for a fix, and are exploring different combinations of color.

And of course, a mood board can be all of the above on the same board.

I worked on a movie once where there was an anti-mood board, which was a board of reference from other movies that this particular film DIDN'T want to emulate. Funnily enough, that board included a motion picture I had previously worked on, which I told the manager, merely promised I'd stay away from that fashion for this film :)

Design Packets

The second type is chosen a Reference / Design / Modeling or Shading Packet. These tend to exist done after the concept phase has happened, and ordinarily include a concept cartoon / painting and some reference material.

Then the first question is who is the intended audience for your package? Since you're afterwards in product, whereas the mood lath could have many dissimilar sorts of people looking at them, these are a petty more focused, and are usually meant for a specific audience.

For example, the model packet is made specifically for a team of 3d modelers who will be taking a concept artist's design and making a 3d model. In this sort of design or modeling packet, you will probable include the final painted concept (or a detailed drawing), perchance a few orthogonal views of the pattern, and maybe some small sketches showing a few details.

But y'all can also include pre-existing imagery, for case, photos of similar type of machinery from the real world, for the 3d modeler to take inspiration from. Or yous could even do only a very rough sketch, then include a lot of reference, if you want the modeler to bring more of their own experience to the table.

You can do the aforementioned sort of packet from shader artists (people texturing the models), layout or set dressing (placing objects in a scene), or an overall design packet that contains all of these together.

Callout Canvas

A callout sheet is very similar to a packet, except the reference tends to be on the same folio as the blueprint, and there are arrows, for yous to "call out" all the footling details.

Let'south take the case of a layout or gear up dressing callout canvas. Say you lot've painted a concept for a room which has hundreds of objects in it. Like a kid's bedroom. Your callout sheet would be a combination of your terminal concept design, and then images of all the major objects in the room. And then for our kids room, you could have a drawing of the room, and then arrows with photographs of real items, like a bed, a chair, a globe, posters on the walls, shoes in the closet. If you lot've separately designed all the objects in the room, you could replace some or all of the reference photographs with the concepts you fabricated, in which instance the callout sheet becomes more of a placement sheet, showing the layout artist where different objects should become in the room.

Here'south a materials callout sheet for a giant robot.

We accept a piece of concept art, in this case, a photobashed / painted set of materials on a rough 3d model. And then callouts showing real world examples of all the dissimilar parts of the robot, so the shading / texture artist will know the sorts of materials they should be making, and how dirty or make clean the different parts of the robot should be.

Making Amend Boards

Are you making this for yourself or the team? If yourself, this can be very loose. But if you're making it for a team of people, I highly recommend a few tips.

1) Add together commentary: Don't merely use images, but likewise add together little captions that explain the images. For example, if I'm going to be making a big robot, and I include an image of a bulldozer, but no further caption, then the person who sees the reference may be asking "Should I find the size of the vehicle? The weathering on the vehicle? the manner the paint on the vehicle looks?" And maybe your original desire was for them to find a really absurd vent on the side of the vehicle, but since y'all didn't specify that, they got the wrong thought.
2) Include URLs: if using reference from other films, games or from the internet, include the names of the films or URLs then that the artist can use that was a spring board to find more reference
three) High Res Originals: As well as including the terminal mood lath, include all of the original reference images that you used to make the mood board, since they may be college resolution than the images included in the lath.

Decision

No matter what y'all call them or their exact format, using reference to communicate to yourself or a squad of people is an invaluable tool in the commercial artists repertoire. Then the next time you work on these sorts of projects, try making a Reference Board, Design Parcel or Callout Sheet. Or if you're presented with one, at present you lot'll know what they are and how they can be best used.